Transformational redesign by Real Estate Webmasters includes rebrand and a fully optimized and responsive, lightning-fast, user-friendly experience.
RISMedia has announced the launch of its new website, rismedia.com, which showcases the media firm’s brand redesign from earlier this year, as well as several new features. Visitors will find a sleek, new look, a faster and easier to navigate menu, a robust search function and a platform that’s fully optimized for SEO and mobile responsive design.
In addition to the brand refresh and new website, the 41-year-old media firm made several other significant investments this year, including a series of executive appointments and strategic hires, designed to further strengthen RISMedia’s editorial, creative, technology and customer service teams, as the company plans its continued expansion and growth.
According to RISMedia Founder, CEO and Publisher John Featherston, now was the right time to invest in these significant company upgrades.
“We recognized that over the past two years we needed to reinvent the infrastructure that makes RISMedia work,” Featherston explains. “We’re becoming a very different organization. The products and services that we now provide to the industry have changed, and with that, we wanted to demonstrate the vitality of our organization and the value we provide going forward.”
RISMedia partnered with website, branding and SEO powerhouse Real Estate Webmasters to build its new site.
The firm recast the site implementing SEO best practices to create a modern, clean and accessible layout that’s easily navigable. In addition to lightning-fast speed and a fully responsive mobile layout, RISMedia embraces more video on the revamped site, as well as more subtle and non-intrusive advertisements. Content is clearly labeled and easy to navigate.
“The overall look and feel of the site is clean, simple and accessible and matches the transition to our newsletters and rebrand,” says Jay Featherston, RISMedia senior vice president of corporate development. “We needed to focus on what we’re good at—generating high-quality content. We brought in experts in SEO and design to help us with those components so that we can be reinvested and refocused on elevating the experience for our clients and readers.”
The new features were designed to benefit both RISMedia readers and clients. Here’s how:
SEO Optimization
Search Engine Optimization is a critical component in reaching new and larger audiences. Implementing SEO best practices will give client-related content the best chance to rank higher organically on search engine result pages, such as Google, Bing and Yahoo.
The new site has been engineered by the leading SEO experts at Real Estate Webmasters to support RISMedia’s mission to increase organic traffic and search rankings.
Some of the SEO improvements include:
- Fully mobile responsive layout and navigation
- Faster page load times
- Increased video content
- Accessibility features
Mobile Responsiveness
More than 50% of RISMedia readers access rismedia.com on their mobile devices.
The new mobile-optimized layout will make reading and navigation easier, which will lead to more time spent on articles and more page views. Display and interstitial ads are also fully optimized for all devices.
Accessibility
RISMedia’s new site has been designed for anyone to navigate and find the information they are looking for, including users with auditory, cognitive, physical, neurological and visual impairments.
Environmental challenges have also been addressed, including reading outdoors or in bright environments or in situations where audio cannot be played out loud.
Search Functionality
The refreshed rismedia.com has robust search functionality, on which readers will not only be able to search by keywords or topics, but our clients will also be able to search their company name or an executive to see each and every article they’ve submitted or in which they’ve been mentioned or quoted.
“Search engine optimization is a core tenet of everything we do,” says Morgan Carey, CEO of Real Estate Webmasters. “We provided full audit services and worked hand-in-hand with RISMedia’s content team to not only protect their most valuable asset, but also ensure that they were set up to grow their organic traffic and SEO results over time.”
Kelli McKenna, RISMedia senior vice president of creative services and marketing, adds, “Real Estate Webmasters did an incredible job with the rebranding of RISMedia. They really took the time to understand who we are and what our future goals are, and translated that into a fresh, modern design that begins with our logo and tagline and carries through across the new website design. That isn’t easy to do for an established brand with over 40 years in the real estate industry. They truly knocked our rebrand and website redesign out of the park.”
Featherston says visitors will enjoy a “phenomenal new site,” emphasizing the benefits it will present to readers and clients.
“The new RISMedia.com offers a state-of-the-art platform that ensures RISMedia will better serve its customers, more efficiently and effectively and in a way they expect, and in a way that will allow us to grow,” Featherston says. “Information is our currency and delivering that effectively is just as important as creating it.”
Featherston and Carey both note that the site is structured to bring even more opportunities for RISMedia’s clients in the future, including Power Brokers, to help them benefit from the authority of RISMedia.com, to both boost their online reputation and even help their own brokerage websites rank higher.
Carey adds, “We’ll be driving massive traffic to RISMedia advertisers and Power Brokers. Stay tuned!”
RISMedia welcomes visitor feedback on our new site! Please visit the brand new RISMedia.com and send comments to online@rismedia.com.
Beth McGuire is RISMedia’s vice president of Online Editorial. Email her your story ideas at beth@rismedia.com.
